Henry Fleming’s Journey To A Hero

Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage was an acknowledged masterpieceof American literature and Crane himself became one of the most closely examinedlate nineteenth-century authors. In The Red Badge of Courage, Crane describes theprotagonist Henry, who experiences the test of death, grows gradually from anignorant boy to a trustworthy man. This thesis, taking American mythologist JosephCampbell’s archetypal pattern “a hero’s journey”: separation—initiation—return, asthe overall theoretical framework, from the perspective of mythological archetype,probes how Henry Fleming accomplishes his journey to be a contemporary hero, fromleaving home for army, to testing in the battlefield, to being able to objectively viewhis own behaviors. Furthermore, with the background of war, this thesis aims toreveal the social changes and problems hidden in American society, and theirinfluences on American youths in the late nineteenth century.